[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Venice, Italy, 13 June 2011
On June 4, THE major event for contemporary fine art, the Venice
Biennial, opened with a remarkable premiere: an officially
recognized collateral event entirely devoted to video games.
Italian art critic and curator Debora Ferrari is the master mind
behind Neoludica. And the work of Belgian independent game
developers Tale of Tales is presented prominently in the
exhibition.
http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/exhibition/collateral-events
http://www.neoludica.it
http://tale-of-tales.com
The Neoludica exhibition takes place in two locations. In the
Centro Culturale Candiani in Mestre, commercial game consoles and
video game history artifacts introduce the audience to the context
of games culture. While in Sala Laneri, the exhibition focuses on
the work of independent artists.
"Ironically, there are only a few playable video games in this
exhibition," Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn (Tale of Tales)
observe during the opening in Sala Laneri. "Most of the works on
display are simply works of fine art that appropriate elements from
video games, much like Duchamp famously appropriated a urinal
almost 100 years ago.
Still, the presence of even a few artistic games in this
prestigious event will probably become a historic mile stone in the
recognition of the medium as a new art form."
Next to "The Path" by Tale of Tales, Molleindustria's "Every day
the same dream" and Santa Ragione's "Fotonica" are on display in
Sala Laneri, as are the games-related art works by Mikayel
Ohanjanyan, Miltos Manetas, Eva & Franco Mattes et al. The
Mestre part of the show features a large collection of prints of
Lorne Lanning's "Oddworld" series as well as playable game consoles
running Gears of War, Ico, and so on.
To celebrate the occasion, Tale of Tales have bundled their
major games on a special limited edition USB stick that can be
purchased from their online store. The drive contains both PC and
Mac versions of The Path, The Graveyard and Fatale, and several
extras.
http://store.tale-of-tales.com/product/tale-of-tales-complete-usb-edition-2011
Tale of Tales is an independent development studio dedicated to
the exploration of video games as a mature artistic medium, founded
in Belgium by Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn in 2002. Their work
is available for download from tale-of-tales.com and distributors
like Steam, Direct2Drive and the App Store. They are currently
working on a prototype for a new version of their first, never
published, game "8".
"Neoludica. Art is a Game 2011-1966" can be visited until
November 27 in Scuola dei Laneri, Sala Laneri, Santa Croce
131/131/A and until October
31 in Centro Culturale Candiani, Mestre in Venice, Italy.
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